Defending Your Home Computer by the Information Warfare Division Chief (or Branch Chief) of the Joint Command, Control and Information Warfare School at the Joint Forces Staff College. It includes best practices and personal recommendations.

Ok, so PC security shouldn't be ignored but that seems to be quite a high level interest for home PC's!

Blimey! Shouldn't need the IWDC, a good inf Section well dug in, in all-round defence should be enough to protect most PCs

Seriously though, anyone connecting to the internet is well advised these days to have "Firewall" software (to keep other people out) and up-to-date anti-virus software (to keep virus infections out) as, just like other infections you can pick up without protection, it's a pain when you get one!

I keep my home pc in an old NBC suit and wear a ressie when I use it - seems to work too.

like has been said, get a firewall and AV software. especially if you are a broadband/cable user.

if unsure what to get PM me and i am happy to advise. (do this stuff for a living)

Its scary when you get a firewall as it tells you when you are being attacked (when i first installed mine was getting 10+ hits a day. made me think how often i was getting hit before and they had access to my hard disk) i still get 10+ hits a day but i turned the pop up warning off so now i live in ignorant but safe bliss.

It is actually excellent and free. Not only does it do what 'Ad-Aware, Spybot etc do, it monitors your system continously. And much to my amazement I say again it's a free Microsoft product, and you do not need XP Service Pack 2 to install it!

Hmm.. Beta stuff should be free - it's supposedly the final version prior to the real one (like Windows 95!!) and the prupose of the Beta trial is for all the happy users to find the bugs and report them without the comeback of "I BOUGHT this and it made my PC crash 20 times in 1 day". Hopefully the finished version has all the bugs ironed out, if not you get a service pack or equivalent soon afterwards.

Call me a cynic but I doubt very much that the final released version will be free UNLESS it helps lock you into using MS-Everything-else from then on. I'm sure there'll be "student" versions available at a knock-down price though to keep the educational market on board.

There have been some interesting trials of "open source" software in Central / Local Government and each time it seems the work has been aided by an "independant" study, sometimes funded by er, Microshaft or someone and each time they've decided that there's no advantage in moving to Open Source.

If you're the sort of person who's disturbed at the thought of having to swear allegiance to T Bliar & co instead or HM - try reading the MS "Agreement" when you install something!! It's a "real easy" read.

In case it's not obvious, I prefer to avoid the big M if I can - oh and if you want a free Anti-virus tool (with updates available) try a google search on AVG -there's about 99,000 "hits" to choose from!